'Why didn't I hug her more?' Clem and the boys struggle in their first month without Lisa

Monday, November 16, 1998

By CONNIE SCHULTZPLAIN DEALER REPORTER

16th of 26 daily articles

November 1997

Six days after Lisa died, Clem was horrified that he had ever wished her ordeal would end.

"There are no doctors to talk to, no IV to set up," he said, sobbing so hard he repeatedly had to stop talking to catch his breath. "I keep asking myself, "Did I hug her enough?' Maybe I didn't do enough. I feel so guilty. Why didn't I hug her more? When I was lying next to her on the bed, why didn't I hold her more? And, you know, there were times when I was doing the IV, taking care of the kids and yelling at them, not sleeping, Lisa was needing so much help, and I would think, "God, maybe it would be better if it were over.' "

He buried his face in his hands. "I feel so bad about that now."

He drew a breath and continued. "Tensie [Holland, a hospice counselor- would say that's normal, feeling that way, but that doesn't really make me feel any better." Clem started seeing Holland at the same time he enrolled the boys in counseling, shortly before Lisa died.

Clem sat on the edge of his bed looking as if he didn't recognize where he was. He glanced around the room, stood up and started rummaging through clothes on the floor in search of his sneakers.

"I'm going to play basketball tonight with my brother Bruce's team. Bruce says I need to go out and get pissed off at someone. Maybe he's right."

'We're a safety net'

The next morning, Charlie Montgomery answered the door at Clem's house. Everyone else flew home after the funeral, but Charlie and another fellow Wesleyan alumnus, John Bennett, stayed behind.

John and Charlie stayed behind to help Clem, but they now were questioning whether they were impeding him instead.

"John and I have talked and we've decided we may be getting in the way of the process for Clem," Charlie said as Clem showered upstairs. "It's going to be hard, he's going to stumble, he might fail at times, but he's got to do this. We're a safety net. He's got to start getting up alone, taking care of the boys alone."

John interrupted. "I'd put it differently. He's approaching another threshhold, and he needs to get to that next stage without us."

The two men grew quiet as they heard Clem walking down the stairs. He was dressed for his first day back to work, looking exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed and his face blotchy from crying.

No one said a word as Clem started talking. "Michael came in and saw her picture, the one that was framed at her funeral, and let out a huge sigh. Christopher is sobbing in his sleep."

Charlie and John stood silent, and Clem merely met their gaze. For a few moments, no one had anything to say.

'These are Lisa's ashes'

Minutes later, Mary was crying on the phone. "Marc cried all through dinner last night. I drive around and think, "I don't want to be here without her.' But then I think, "Maybe I do want to stick around for my kids.' My kids need me. It's just so hard.

"One of my girls overheard some of Lisa's friends talking about cleaning out the house. That has me concerned. Like her cookbooks, for example. Maybe Clem would find comfort in them being around, you know?"

Clem frowned when told of Mary's concern. "No one is taking anything else out of this house until I'm ready," he said tersely. "And I'm not ready."

He walked over to the dining room hutch, picked up a gold crucifix Father Martin Amos gave him after Lisa's funeral and then pointed to two small, gold boxes with labels bearing the name Hearey.

"Those are Lisa's ashes, those little boxes," he said, staring at them as he absent-mindedly caressed the crucifix. He sighed as his eyes teared. "I don't know why I'm going to work. I don't know why I'm going in. Everyone will be coming up to me." He paused, wiped his eyes. "I'd rather go in when nobody's there."

John walked over next to him. "Go in, Clem. Get it over with. You go in for a couple of hours, let everybody say what they want to say, then you're done with it. You've got to do it sometime, you may as well do it now."

Clem looked at John as if hanging on his every word. "OK. You're probably right."

John snatched the crucifix from Clem's hands and held it dramatically in front of him at arm's length. "This is what you do. You take this and walk through the halls like this. That'll keep everyone away."

They all laughed, and Clem pulled on his overcoat. John and Charlie watched him as he walked out the door, his collar twisted and threads hanging from his hem.

'I'll get my chance'

Clem and Lisa are at a black-tie function, and Lisa looks radiant. She is surrounded by people, so many that Clem can't get to her. He has something to tell her, he needs to talk to her. He has to wait, though, and he sits on a nearby sofa, his frustration growing as he watches her laughing it up with one person after another. "I'll get my chance, I'll get my chance," he keeps telling himself. Suddenly, Lisa isn't in the room, and Clem is outside, searching for her. "I just want to talk to you," he thinks as he looks for her. "Just for a moment." Then he sees her. She's in a car, and she doesn't even look at him as she cruises past and drives away.

"I don't need an analyst to explain that dream," Clem said flatly about an hour after waking. "She just seemed to be having such a good time, and it makes me feel like I did something wrong that she won't even talk to me."

It was Clem's first dream about Lisa since she had died on Oct. 28, and although he was clearly upset by it, he would not be discussing it with any hospice counselor.

"I'm not going anymore," he said. "She's a nice person, but she's too by-the-book for me." He was ending the boys' counseling, too, after several weeks. The long drives to Euclid were hard to fit in after a long day at work, he said, and overall the children seemed to be doing OK. He was haunted, though, by one comment from his own counselor.

"She said one widower told her, "I'm giving it a month, that's it, and then I'm going to be done grieving and get on with my life.' That amazed me, that he could actually say that. I know a lot of people say men get over it sooner than women, but why is it like that? Why do people think this is any bit easier because I am a man?"

'I've been stewing some'

Not everyone agreed with Clem that the boys were doing OK. In the immediate days after Lisa's death, Mary became increasingly critical of Clem.

"I was talking to an old friend of Lisa's, and she said Lisa worried that her boys didn't love her because they always asked for Clem. When Andy told me that Clem said Michael is crying at night for Lisa, I was blunt: "Honest, in the last 20 months, I never once heard those boys ask for Lisa.' "

Mary repeatedly apologized for her bursts of anger. "I've been stewing some now that I've been back. It's so hard to be without Lisa.Those boys need a set bedtime, they need to get to bed earlier. . . . And I think the boys are crying because they're seeing Clem cry so much. I would like them to see Clem more upbeat with them."

Mamie Asbury, the woman who had watched the boys in late summer and returned after Lisa's death to care for the boys after school, voiced similar concerns about Clem's approach.

"Clem took the boys to the cemetery the other day," she said, standing in the kitchen as she talked over the noise of the boys arguing in the family room. "I'm worried that it may have been too soon. I hope he doesn't do that a lot with them."

Lisa hired Mamie in late August, but only after her friend, Gayle Young, convinced her that she needed the help. Gayle placed the newspaper ad and screened the initial candidates; when Mamie called, Gayle recommended her to Lisa.

Mamie, 65, had cared for another Shaker family with four boys for 12 years until the children were grown. She needed another baby-sitting job, but she had worried about whether she could handle the emotional load of caring for a dying mother's children.

When she met with Lisa, Mamie was touched by her love for her boys and her honesty about what lay ahead for her. After resisting for months hiring someone, Lisa was relieved. "Mamie, I think God sent you to us," she told Mamie, who gasped and clutched her chest whenever she recalled Lisa's words. "When she said that, I knew, I just knew, that this was where I needed to be."

Once Mamie was hired, Lisa often remained upstairs in bed during the afternoons. "I want the boys to get used to her without me around," she said in late September. Mamie stayed away during the time Lisa's family showed up to help with her care, but she paid a brief visit to Lisa the week before she died.

"How are you, honey?" Mamie asked her as she held her hand.

"I'm tired, Mamie," Lisa told her. "Please take care of my boys, Mamie. Take care of Clem and the boys."

After Lisa died, the reality of a household full of guys was overwhelming. "I'm working too hard here, too long," she said in early November. "The kids are really getting out of hand. They're not listening, they tear the house up."

By midmonth, Mamie was even more frustrated. "Everybody in Shaker knows me. They keep saying, "Don't leave, they need you.' I'm there because I'm supposed to be helping, but they get away with everything. Clem is a good man, he loves his children. He's grieving and the kids know it."

The sound of Clem's car door closing ended Mamie's musings that evening. "Oh, well, he's got to do what he's got to do." She smiled at Clem when he walked into the kitchen, said goodbye as she quickly departed.

'Those aren't dragons'

Before taking off his coat, Clem rifled through papers on his dining room table to pull out a drawing Michael did the previous weekend, exactly one week after Lisa's funeral.

In the picture, dragons appear to be chasing a human who is yelling, "hlep [help- me." "Dera [Dear- Dad," he wrote at the top of the drawing. "This is for you and I wish there was no kasr [cancer- Love Michael."

Clem smiled at him, then held out some things he found in one of Lisa's bedside drawers. At night he was rummaging through her drawers and belongings as if in search of clues about his wife. A scrap of paper with a to-do list in her small, loopey handwriting reduced him to an hour of sobs one evening.

"Look how pretty she is," he said to Michael as he fanned several photos of Lisa taken at the time he met her. Then Clem opened Lisa's journal, which she started in March 1996. There were only four entries, which Lisa wrote just before her last-hope surgery.

"I guess it's OK for me to read this now, right?" Clem said, shrugging his shoulders and looking uncomfortable. "Look what she wrote about me."

The entry, dated April 4, 1996, was her last in the journal:

"I was just thinking about Clem and how much he means to me. It's funny when I think back to dating him and his "reluctance' to commit. It wasn't really reluctance, more - serious . . . as the old saying goes, "still waters run deep' - that's Clem. He is so special - truly committed and loving. I was thinking about teaching him to drive a stick-shift. How many wives can claim they taught their husband how to drive? It's funny to think about it. I love him and am lucky to have him in my life. . ."

C.J. stood nearby as Clem read the passage aloud. "It's kind of nice to see that, you know?" said Clem.

C.J. was silent. He understood his father's need to keep his mother alive. Just yesterday, he had picked up the phone and dialed Lisa's former work number at Ohio Savings.

"Michael, Chris, come here!" he yelled. All three boys crowded around the receiver as Lisa's voice mail message played: "This is Lisa Hearey. I am currently on a leave of absence . . ."

Messages for Connie Schultz can be left at (216) 999-4249, or send her e-mail to cschultz@plaind.com